The only thing the entire world is talking about at the moment is, understandably, the coronavirus. We wake up thinking about it, and go to sleep reading about it. But for all the discourse around the virus, we haven’t really understood what it feels like to suffer from the dreaded disease.
To that end, Deccan Herald spoke to Venkataraghava P K, a resident of Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Bangalore, who is the first coronavirus patient discharged in the city after a complete recovery.
According to him, the main symptoms are a high fever, an inability to concentrate, dizziness and a general sense of depression and despondency.
He was quarantined at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases. Describing the ordeal, he said,
The mornings were the worst. I had to place a wet cloth on my head to control the temperature. The medical staff would introduce a paracetamol IV and the temperature would drop to 100.5 F for the rest of the day. But it would never break.
Apart from being left weak and with a sense of gloom, he also suffered from a spike in sugar levels. According to him, the worst part was that the fever didn’t go away for 15 days. For him, it was a month-long nightmare.
Since there is no dedicated treatment for Covid-19, doctors are using a symptomatic treatment using TamiFlu, which they say is effective. They are also giving general antibiotics to prevent pneumonia.
Recovery is much harder if a patient slips into pneumonia. If that is prevented, the fever can be managed.
It’s heartening to know that recovery is possible. The more information we get about the disease and its treatment, the better.